Lucasfilm Creates A 4K Ultra-HD Restoration of the Original 'Star Wars' (4k.com) 304
An anonymous reader quotes 4K.com:
When the first ever of the Star Wars films, "A New Hope" turns 40 in 2017, millions of dedicated fans of the immensely popular franchise might get a very unique treat in the form of a limited theater screening in beautifully restored form with theatrical 4K resolution of the first movie released in the series. According to recent comments made by Rogue One director Gareth Edwards, a 4K restoration of Star Wars Episode IV "A New Hope" does indeed exist and now the only real question is whether or not the cleaned up and sharpened version of the movie will be hitting the big screen once again.
White it's release status is unknown, the ultra-high definition footage is said to be spectacular. In the interview, Edwards says "You can't watch it without getting carried away... It just turns you into a child."
White it's release status is unknown, the ultra-high definition footage is said to be spectacular. In the interview, Edwards says "You can't watch it without getting carried away... It just turns you into a child."
Keep it original... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope they don't do something stupid like add additional content like they did with THX1138.
Re:Keep it original... (Score:4, Insightful)
of the Original 'Star Wars'
More Fake News. I don't believe it for a second. Unless Han shoots first and all of the other crap has been put back to where it was when the film was created, then it isn't the Original Star Wars. And even though that whore Lucas no longer has any say in this production, I can't see the new whores allowing us to have a true copy of the Star Warts film masterpiece.
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Check out the "Despecialized Editions". They are fan made restorations of the original movies, with all the additions and changes removed. Han shoots first, Jabba is just a guy in the first one, all the stupid CG crap has been done away with.
The amount of effort that went into the project is amazing. They took footage from multiple sources - the Bluray release, the older DVD "original trilogy", laserdiscs, scanned film prints, even some still photos taken on set and of props. Re-coloured everything to match
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And removing "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" from the opening crawl. That didn't appear until the 1981 re-release.
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> Han didn't shoot first. Han shot ONLY.
You mean Han shot SOLO?
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Huh? I didn't THX1138 got added stuff.
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I hope they don't do something stupid like add additional content like they did with THX1138.
They will add a dream sequence, making it clear that Luke is actually a replicant.
(Of course they'll add stuff, otherwise it'd be hard to justify selling yet anoter special edition for $$$).
Re:Keep it original... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all of the changes were bad - just most of them. Replacing the cardboard cutouts of rebels at the awards ceremony at the end with real people, for example. Or replacing the terrible hologram of the emperor in Empire with a proper one, for another. Or fixing the low quality light saber effect in A New Hope and editing out the wires. The clank when storm trooper hits his head was also a nice touch.
Honestly though, more than that, I'd love to see the version 2 script of A New Hope ("Adventures of the Starkiller") made into a movie - with the characters looking as much like they did the actual A New Hope, just to enhance the mindfuck effect. Because it had so much that was the same, but so much that was utterly different. Leia wasn't Luke's sister; she was Owen and Beru's daughter, who had a crush on Luke that made him uncomfortable. The capital of the empire wasn't Coruscant, it was Alderaan, but looked like Cloud City. C3P0 fired the shot that destroyed the Death Star. The Emperor isn't a Sith, he just hired the Sith as muscle - and his name is Cos Dashit (seriously). Storm troopers had silver shields and light sabers. Tuskans ride landspeeders and spy for the Empire. Grand Moff Tarkin is a "birdlike" rebel commander. Luke (Starkiller, not Skywalker) is a wannabe-archaeologist with a magic crystal. Seriously, look it up. Somebody totally needs to make it, it'd be hilarious.
There is one thing that they changed from the 2nd draft to the final draft that I actually think might have been better left in. In the 2nd draft, Han agrees to take Luke to Aldaraan for a high fee as before, but then it turns out in the next scene that he doesn't actually own the Millennium Falcon like he claims; he's just a low-ranking crewman to the main pirate/smuggler. So he fakes a reactor leak on the Falcon to get the others to leave, then steals it, without letting on to his passengers what he's just done. Chewy is in on the plot, as is an android science officer (glad they got rid of the latter).
Re: Keep it original... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think all of those changes are fucking bullshit. Replacing one special effect fromi 197X with one from 201X isn't useful, they'll all look stupid in 204X, but at least the original from 197X won't be jarring as fuck and out of place. A comedic clank when a stormtrooper hits his head? Fuck that change. Fuck it to fucking death.
Give the original star wars back. Like the despecialized edition, except official. Not this shit festival of retcons and edits and anachronistic special effects.
Oh the original lightsabers? Were amazing. Period.
Re: Keep it original... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that a joke? The New Hope light sabers were terrible. Very inconsistently rotoscoped. Came across as a serious rush job - unlike in Empire and Jedi.
Seriously, a lot of the original trilogy special effects were just bad. Come on, defend the use of this hologram [wordpress.com]. Don't get me wrong, a lot - I'd say most - of their special effects worked. It's amazing how much worse Phantom Menace Jabba looks than RotJ Jabba, for example, over a decade earlier. Not. Even. Close. But just because Lucas made a habit of inserting bad digital effects is no reason to excuse places where the original trilogy screwed up. In a New Hope you can very clearly see a wire running from Obiwan's light saber into his robe. Vader's motions don't line up with his voice at one point, leaving him looking like he's doing sign language. In Empire you can clearly see the stick used to topple one of the AT-ATs. There's lots of things like this that are just simply mistakes.
And yes, sorry, but if you're going to show a storm trooper hitting his head on camera, it should make a sound. Own up to your errors.
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The best mindfuck would be remaking Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith with Jar Jar Binks as a Sith Lord
Re:Keep it original... (Score:5, Funny)
The best mindfuck would be remaking Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith with Jar Jar Binks as a Sith Lord
Oh no, you had to say that? Now I'm doomed to keep hearing ...
Meesa no kill your father, Luke. Meesa is your father.
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Re:Keep it original... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://imgur.com/gallery/Putq2 [imgur.com]
Re:Keep it original... (Score:5, Informative)
Just in case you (or anyone else reading this) doesn't know, there is a very very convincing, and solid theory that JarJar was in fact THE Phantom Menace alluded to in the title. Check youtube for jarjar sith theory and check them out. I'm not saying I'm 100% convinced, but I need a better reason to disbelieve than just the fanboy hate of GL thinking, "aww, no, he's not clever enough to do that."
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Just in case you (or anyone else reading this) doesn't know, there is a very very convincing, and solid theory that JarJar was in fact THE Phantom Menace alluded to in the title. Check youtube for jarjar sith theory and check them out. I'm not saying I'm 100% convinced, but I need a better reason to disbelieve than just the fanboy hate of GL thinking, "aww, no, he's not clever enough to do that."
I did read that last year. If Lucas did plan that & then backed off because Binks was so disliked, then he's a fucking coward. That would have been a Crying Game-level twist.
Re:Keep it original... (Score:4, Insightful)
The best mindfuck would be remaking Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith with Jar Jar Binks as a Sith Lord
Oh no, you had to say that? Now I'm doomed to keep hearing ...
Meesa no kill your father, Luke. Meesa is your father.
Actually I'm fairly certain that Padme was in on Darth Sidious' scheme the whole time and was his apprentice if not a Sith Lord in her own right. Just look at how she teased Anakin, it seemed quite deliberate to me. She was leading him along the path to the dark side from the very beginning.
Re:Keep it original... (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite retcon is that Obi Wan was personally involved in the deaths of Owen and Beru.
We'd known from early on that he was a total manipulative liar. Telling Luke, for example, that Vader killed his father, convincing him of precisely the opposite of the truth, and then layer gaslighting Luke as if it was Luke's fault for not understanding his lie. After the original trilogy came out, it gets way worse. He lies about having never seen the droids before. He sees no reason to mention that he personally chopped up Luke's dad and left him for dead. His whole purpose for being near Luke on Tatooine is to "watch over him" "until the time is right" to recruit him into the rebellion.
So we know his motivation going into this. To recruit Luke into the rebellion. It's essential to him, for the fate of the galaxy. And we know the guy is a horribly manipulative liar. And let's face it, Luke is a moron. The guy is given a light saber for the first time and he nearly accidentally stabs Obi Wan when he turns it on.
So Obi Wan tells him this yarn about Vader murdering his father, rather than... well, Obi Wan's attempted murder of him. And then they head out and find the sand crawler, and Obi Wan insists that it had to have been attacked by the Empire because, why again? "Only Imperial Storm Troopers are so precise." Which we all know to be unadulterated BS. If it's precise, there's no way in hell storm troopers did it. And there's no way Obi Wan would think that they did. So he knows he's lying. Which means that he was probably involved in it in some way. Which means that he would have likewise been involved in the related attack on Owen and Beru. The very thing that, shock of all shocks, motivates Luke to go with and join the Rebellion, just as Obi Wan could easily have foreseen.
And there's no shortage of people he could have hired to carry out the attack, on a planet as lawless as Tatooine. Heck, I couldn't rule out him working with the Tuskan raiders themselves. Let's not forget, Obi Wan "coincidentally" showed up right on time to "rescue" Luke from said Tuskan raiders just moments before. They just ran off when he arrived and alerted them... I'm sorry, "scared them off", with a Krayt Dragon impersonation that wouldn't fool anyone. It wouldn't be the first time they had worked with a Jedi (Sharad Hett) - and Obi Wan had tried to kill the guy who slaughtered one of their villages years prior. And beyond the Tuskan Raiders, there's a whole bar full of bounty hunters and violent thugs in town who could have suited the bill Heck, he could have done it all himself, having arrived to "save" Luke on his way back from burning the homestead and sandcrawler while Luke was out searching for R2D2; all it would have taken was a landspeeder, and they're not exactly unattainable.
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The question becomes: Were most of the plot points from Episode 1-3 devised by him before shooting 4-6? Stuff like Obi-Wan precipitating Anakin's reliance on the suit, claiming to not know the droids etc. could just as easily be explained by a lot of the writing from 1-3 being retcon and thereby inconsistent with the script of 4-6.
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They wheren't. I.e Vader as Lukes father and Leia as his sister was retconned in ep 5 so no when ep 4 was filmed none of the other movies where even planned.
It wasn' even labelled episode IV when it first aired, that was added a few years later.
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Except that he didn't. Read the earlier scripts. Luke's dad was "The Starkiller" and was a major figure in the Rebellion. Vader was the First Knight of the Sith, the Sith being an organization of thuggish force users hired by the emperor Cos Dashit (who was not himself a Sith).
It's not clear when the precise moment of time was that it was decided that Vader would be Luke's father. But the character of Darth Vader was created and named while someone else was supposed to be Luke's father.
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He pretended not to recognize them at all.
Keep the android science officer... (Score:2)
Chewy is in on the plot, as is an android science officer (glad they got rid of the latter).
That does sound pretty good, only I would love to see the science officer left in - though not as Android, but as hologram [wikipedia.org]....
Can you imagine the howls?
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Or fixing the low quality light saber effect in A New Hope
Actually I don't think they did that. They look just as shoddy in the Special Edition as they do in the original.
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>> Unlikely. Lucas destroyed the originals when he made the Special Editions.
Whut? Why TF would he do that?
Re:Keep it original... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Whut? Why TF would he do that?
Because George is highly insecure.
He has to keep fucking around with Star Wars, tweaking this, fixing that, until it is "perfect" in his mind's eye.
As an artist he doesn't realize he needs to move on. The work is what is. Fans loved the original vision. Some fans love the changes. Some don't.
George Lucas is unable to respect the fans that want to see the original version.
We're happy with the original. Is it perfect? No. But it is perfectly fine the way it is.
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No. Nor should there be.
For The Betterment Of Humanity (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think this sounds harsh, imagine the Mona Lisa getting a new hairstyle or clothes every 20 years because fashion had changed. Let's cover "David's" penis because we're politically correct this generation. And then we can change it back when the next generation lightens up... These innocent tweaks are distorting, and in some cases, ruining art (with the new ideas no longer reflective of the era in which the art was created, mind you).
"E.T.'s" right to bear arms should not be infringed.
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Of course not. Don't be absurd.
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He has to keep fucking around with Star Wars, tweaking this, fixing that, until it is "perfect" in his mind's eye.
And that's going to be painful, with that Splinter stuck in it...
Re:Keep it original... (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Unlikely. Lucas destroyed the originals when he made the Special Editions.
Whut? Why TF would he do that?
Because he is God of the Star Wars Universe and mere things like preservation of significant historical documents, and the desires of the fan base are nothing to him.
Lucas is a brilliant businessman, his career with LucasFilm and ILM speak for themselves. But his talents and wisdom as a director and creative force are extremely uneven, and he seems unable to consider the views of others, no matter how well founded and insightful. Again, his post Star Wars career speaks for itself. I think he was extremely lucky to have an astonishingly talented team working with him when he made Star Wars, and he was also lucky that he had to collaborate and let others make key decisions - he was not so successful at that point that he could be creative dictator.
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Unlikely. Lucas destroyed the originals when he made the Special Editions.
Lucas used to be an editor. He is famous for never throwing away anything.
There may be no original prints of A New Hope left, but all the source material almost certainly exists.
Re:Keep it original... (Score:5, Interesting)
There may be no original prints of A New Hope left, but all the source material almost certainly exists.
The explanation, from what I recall, is that while the original source materials may exist, they are so degraded as to be useless for any kind of theatrical or master-quality presentation again. (Fair warning: my recollection is from watching documentaries on the Star Wars DVDs from several years ago, so anyone can feel free to correct me if they have watched them more recently.)
The original master 35mm print of Star Wars, being celluloid, was subject to scratching and wear throughout the process of making all the copies for theaters to show. On top of that, even well-preserved celluloid is subject to natural degradation over time - colors wash out, etc. Think of old photos in a photo album that over time have grown dimmer and less distinct.
I recall someone (John Knoll?) on the DVDs saying of the digital remastering efforts in 1996/1997 that the original master was already in bad enough shape that, had they not digitized it then, there could never have been a copy good enough to convert to high definition digital or theater projection quality. When they did the digital conversion though, they didn't keep (this logic sounds a bit fuzzy but bear with me) the pure original scan. Like a photographer who shoots an original photo that isn't "good enough" but needs to retouch it before publishing, they made their digital upgrades/cleanups and didn't bother to keep the unretouched versions since they (George Lucas?) in essence said, "what we scanned was crap so who needs that?"
Ergo - at least according to the then-Lucas-owned-LucasFilm party line - you end up with a badly degraded original celluloid version in a vault somewhere still, but the only high-def/digital version left is the one that had all the cleanup and alterations done to it. That doesn't necessarily mean that they didn't keep a digital version where Han shot first, but it does mean that there is no digital version left of the fully untouched "original." Which may be a fine point of distinction worth considering as to whether it's still possible to see the "original" depending on what that means to you.
Re:Keep it original... (Score:5, Informative)
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Because in the original one Han Shot First.
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It was revolutionary though. No one did a lot of good science fiction with a decent amount of budget back then. And it's a very good homage to the space opera genre. It's not at all mediocre, unless you only judge a film by its effects.
Re: Keep it original... (Score:5, Funny)
episode 4 was surprisingly good in resurrecting the franchise, considering how appallingly bad episodes 2 and 3 were. :-)
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episode 4 was surprisingly good in resurrecting the franchise, considering how appallingly bad episodes 2 and 3 were. :-)
No, 3 had its moments and a more appropriate, darker tone. 1 was stupid and cheezy, 2 was just horrible.
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Well I thought Hayden Christensen's character was woefully miscast. Teen romantic becomes intergalactic assassin? Sorry, didn't buy it.
The biggest shame for me was Obi Wan's act of mercy in that he found Anakin so pitiful that couldn't bring himself to finish the genocidal crybaby off! (of course then we wouldn't have eps 4-6)
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Cinema Sins ripped into the original trilogy worse than they've ever ripped into any other movies, and a lot of their criticisms I found ot be dead on.
* It was a constant violation of the rule "Show, Don't Tell". They're constantly describing events that happened off camera that sound a lot more interesting than what they actually showed, which was awkward forced "romance", politics, and badly done CG battles.
* Everybody's beliefs and motivations were so constantly shifting that it was as i
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I've never thought there could be an actor that bad.
Nobody could be that bad even if they really tried.
With Lukas giving the cues, it seems almost anyone can. Only the actors arrogant or experienced enough to ignore his bullshit instructions come of as decent when he is directing.
They all had moments (Score:2)
No, 3 had its moments and a more appropriate, darker tone. 1 was stupid and cheezy, 2 was just horrible.
Come on, the lightsaber battle in 1 was really good, and pretty dark all by itself. Also the initial scene on the droid ship was pretty good if you think of it standalone and ignore the absurd droid army stuff that comes later.
2 Had, um, well,... Clone trooper carrier ship! OK, yeah, that was a cool Clone Trooper ship. Ok, also the asteroid field with the sonic weapon was fun. Sadly though it contained
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Come on, the lightsaber battle in 1 was really good, and pretty dark all by itself. Also the initial scene on the droid ship was pretty good if you think of it standalone and ignore the absurd droid army stuff that comes later.
And if you ignore the fact that they hired 12 year old actors for it, and cheesed up the ambassadors being bumbling fools.
Re: Keep it original... (Score:4, Funny)
Well the thing was Lucas was very inexperienced as a director but by the time episode 4, "A new hope" rolled around Lucas had finally learned to trust the actors and stop redoing scenes til the emotion was drained from them. And then for episode 5 Lucas handed the reigns to another experienced character director and focused on producing.
Also, the actors chosen for episodes 1-3 were terrible so when Lucasfilm decided to reboot series with fresh new actors as of episode 4 they did a much better job, for example picking unknown actors who had a lot of chemistry with each other. The decision to go with puppets for Yoda was a big step up from the poor CGI they had used for him in the first 3 films.
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Also, the actors chosen for episodes 1-3 were terrible so when Lucasfilm decided to reboot series with fresh new actors as of episode 4 they did a much better job
I'm having a hard time believing you don't know episodes 4-6 were produced years before episodes 1-3.
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wake me up from my cryotube when the holodeck version is out.
The Cantina (Score:5, Interesting)
"... now the only real question is whether or not the cleaned up and sharpened version of the movie will be hitting the big screen once again."
No! Now the only real question is whether or not they will show that Han shot first!
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I agree with Cinema Sins that even worse than making Han shoot first is making Greedo (who let's not forget is a professional bounty hunter) be such a terrible shot that he can shoot at Han (who isn't moving) from less than a meter away and not even be close to hitting him.
Re:The Cantina (Score:4, Funny)
I know, it was almost like Greedo was a Stormtrooper without uniform.
Re: The Cantina (Score:2)
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Han didn't shoot first.
Here's the order of operations:
Han shoots Greedo.
Greedo never fires, because Han shot him, and Greedo is dead.
Of course. Which it is so utterly stupid and insulting to the audience to have Greedo shoot first. Han would have been dead. They were sitting across from each other at an effing table for X's sake!
"It just turns you into a child" (Score:2)
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How did it end? I never bothered to find out.
Luke and Leia doing it, then fade to black.
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Apparently "Royal Flash" was released in 1975, but small town cinemas get whatever they can get whenever it comes I suppose.
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Were you the nerd in the theater with the Pantone Color swatches?
I thought they originals were destroyed... (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought they claimed the original theatrical release version was destroyed and would never be released in high quality, and that was one of the main reasons people collaborated to produce the Star Wars HD despecialized edition [originaltrilogy.com].
The fans are on the very tip of weather vane! (Score:2, Funny)
"Uncle George never told you what happened to the original theatrical release version"
"He told me enough. He told me it was destroyed"
"No. I am the original version."
"Noooooooooo! that's not true.....that impossible!"
"Search your archives for you know it is true!"
Edit: Captcha> Monetary
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I thought they claimed the original theatrical release version was destroyed
Did people claim that? I thought it was just that Lucas refused to release a HQ version of the original, because he wanted various "improvements" he had made over the years.
and would never be released in high quality
Yeah, I'm going to just say that I seriously doubt -- after all the crap Lucas has taken over the years for his tampering with various releases -- that he's going to actually release the TRUE original version in high quality. TFA makes it clear that nobody really knows what this will be:
As for the question of which version of the movie will hit the big screen in 4K if the release rumor is true, thatâ(TM)s something that has also stirred up debates among fans of the franchise. ...
That goes on to describe the various possibilitie
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Won't matter what Lucas says. Disney owns the Star Wars franchise now. Lucas is 100% removed from it.
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Disney owns the Star Wars franchise now.
...and 20th Century Fox owns the original trilogy.
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When George Lucas announced the "improved" versions of the classic Star Wars movies, he famously claimed that it would be impossible to recreate the original release versions. He said something like he had accidentally "taped over" the originals (for you younglings, that's a video tape analogy).
As this article commented bitingly, it would have been embarrassing for Lucas if the original version had outsold the "improved" version on home video release. So it was sure convenient for him that it was totally
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The title is wrong. 4K != UHD (Score:5, Informative)
Theatrical 4K is not the same as Ultra-HD, often marketed as "4K UHD". Seriously, don't muddle these up! The linked article did not, it even had "Theatrical 4K" explicitly, being a link to an explanation of the differences.
The cinema standard 4K is 4096*2160, not quite 16:9 aspect ratio. However, movies can be of any aspect ratio that would fill either the width or the height. With Star Wars being in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, that becomes 4096*1743. Pixels are square and there is no overscan.
Ultra-HD, the TV and BluRay standard is 3840*2160 pixels. Some HDTV's do have overscan, not showing the entire picture, by the way.
Cinema 4K also uses the DCI-P3 colour space and theatrical projectors are capable of the entire range of this colour space.
Regular Ultra-HD is not that good. Ultra-HD with HDR uses a larger colour space than DCI-P3 but mainstream LCD panels at the moment are not capable of displaying that properly even if they can handle the input signal.
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What about film grain? I thought there were limitations on resolution based on the original "analog" film because the grain simply doesn't allow you to get more detail... and I thought this was in issue back when we were just talking 1080p, let alone 4k resolutions.
I can see color space being enhanced, though on a 40 year old film copy, I'd think that something has been lost in time, as well.
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Cinema 4K also uses the DCI-P3 colour space...
Oh, come on. DCI-3P wasn't even in the original trilogy. Unless it was one of the droids that never got called out by name...
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Sorry, no (Score:2)
The first movie rightfully deserves to be preserved in the Library of Congress. It is part of the American culture, and history. But, having said that, I have a confession to make:
The movie simply has not aged well. The last time I watched it on DVD, a few years ago, I decided never to watch it again. Now, that I'm much older, the movie looks rather simplistic and rough; and I would rather remember the movie the way I saw it, with much younger eyes and a less crtitical brain. These days, Darth Vader's initi
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To state the obvious: the 4K version is nothing more than a pathetic, utterly pathetic money grab. And nothing more. That should be fairly obvious to anyone. I can't think of any possible value that four thousand pixels will bring to that movie. I just have a bad feeling about this...
No, the previous re-re-re-releases were pathetic money grabs. A proper 4K restoration is what they should have done in the first place.
Re:Sorry, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Luke playing with a starfighter, in one of his first scenes, is cringe-worthy.
Oh c'mon, you've never done it? FWIW, that wasn't a "starfighter,' that was a scale model of the speeder parked *right behind Luke.* That is his T-16, the one he bullseyes womp rats with. Seriously, you can see the ass end of his real T-16 right behind him.
One is never too old to play with toys. Never. I have a fair collection of 1:400 diecast aircraft, and when I clean house I *always* "land" the Pan Am 707-321 on its display place.
The day one becomes "too old" for such frippery, one is ready for the pine box. The kind with rope handles and no wheels.
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One is never too old to play with toys. [...] The day one becomes "too old" for such frippery, one is ready for the pine box. The kind with rope handles and no wheels.
How would help? It sounds like the worst toy ever.
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One is never too old to play with toys.
"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
(Sorry for the paradigm shift, but it seemed appropriate.)
unique (Score:2, Redundant)
"unique" is a binary term. Something is either unique or not unique. There are no "degrees" of uniqueness.
Re:unique (Score:5, Funny)
"unique" is a binary term. Something is either unique or not unique. There are no "degrees" of uniqueness.
That is a somewhat unique perspective.
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Very well put!
You make an excellent case for the usage.
Can it be an all versions blu-ray? (Score:3)
Not sure if it's possible with blu-ray. I would like to see an all versions disc where one only has to select options in an options menu for what they want to see. Han shot first should be default but we can keep around the revisionist history for laughs.
Better yet... come up with yet another proprietary DRM format and release it on an 128gb sd card or compact flash. Honestly it should be as lossless as possible and DRM free.. you know how much any ISP is going to complain to any customer that tries to download that? Do the equivalent of a DOS attack by providing too much data. Collectors are going to want origional media. It's not like people haven't seen Star Wars.
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uncompressed 4K is 18gb/s so a 100gb multi layer bluray can hold a little over 7 seconds of it.
People buying 4K blurays are buying heavily compressed movies that are barely better than the 1080p version.
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4096 * 2160 pixels * 30 bit color depth * 24 frames per second = 760 megabytes per second. Even if we're talking 32 bit color depth and 48 fps 3d, that only gives us 3.2 gigabytes per second.
Pretty sure that "18gbps" number isn't right or you're mixing units. You do know that a gigabyte and a gigabit aren't the same thing, right?
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Not sure if it's possible with blu-ray. I would like to see an all versions disc where one only has to select options in an options menu for what they want to see. Han shot first should be default but we can keep around the revisionist history for laughs.
I'll watch the Sentinel class shuttle seen, dewbacks not close up, Mos Eisley is busier, but no giant CGI ass walking across the screen blocking everything, Han shoots and Greedo doesn't he just dies, Falcon lifts off from docking bay, stormtrooper head clunk, Imps getting shot not censored, improved lightsaber effects, no matte boxes visible around ships, R2-D2 in color, no stupid ring explosion Death Star destruction, real people in ceremony not cardboard ones, and how about Chewie gets a medal version pl
The only question... (Score:2)
... is how much are they going to milk it for?
(As much as they can is the correct answer.)
The only real question...? (Score:2)
The only real question is: does Han fucking shoot first?
Sharpened? They blurred the original intentionally (Score:3)
because in the first non-blurred print, the models looked too fake. So slight blurring restored the sense of reality.
Re: (Score:2)
Loved the movie, btw!
But but but.... (Score:2, Interesting)
All the luddites CLAIM that 35mm film is a WHOLE LOT BETTER than digital... why did they have to clean it up and do digital restoration?
It's because in reality, SW EP4 film is lower resolution than real 4K is so they are getting rid of film grain and using their high end software that will make it less obvious how low of resolution the 35mm film really was.
Hell you could see the lack of sharpness and film grain on the 1080p release.
Re: (Score:2)
All the luddites CLAIM that 35mm film is a WHOLE LOT BETTER than digital...
They do? I mean sure you might be able to find a few somewhere, but this is not a common viewpoint.
It was at the beginning, but in fairness:
1. digital sensors had poor resolution and otherwise kind of sucked
2. Nobody wanted to sit at a clunky old desktop and look at photos, home printers sucked (and were expensive) and shop printers negated much of the advantage of a digital chain (see also 1).
3. The software either sucked massively
Will the National Film Registry finally get it? (Score:2)
Both the original Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back were officially added to the National Film Registry when it was created in the late 1980s. However, Lucasfilm never delivered an original, unmodified copy of either movie. George Lucas tried to give the NFR a copy of the "improved" edition, but they refused it; their mandate is to preserve original versions of historic movies.
http://www.popoptiq.com/a-new-new-hope-film-preservation-and-the-problem-with-star-wars/ [popoptiq.com]
The article notes that ironically enough,
Changes I disliked (Score:2)
I saw the original first run, and was disappointed with some of the later "improvements".
For example, when they changed the combination from 1-2-3-4.
That's kind of change only an idiot would make....
"Carried away" (Score:2)
If Empire remake: will Carrie wear slave outfit? (Score:2)
Or will that get disneyfied out?
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Much like Star Wars Episode One was basically a really lengthy commercial for that Podracer game.
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If it didn't have that annoying Mary Sue character (that kid) in it...
Re: (Score:3)
You failed to explain why the hell we'd WANT to.
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4k is supposed to be better than the original 70mm we saw?
Certainly not. 4k "HD" is about the same quality compared to analog video as a 96 Mbps MP3 is compared to analog audio.
But the young generation has no concept of analog as they have never experienced it. Nor big silver screens, as they have grown up with movieplexes with numerous smaller screens with angular digital projections. And an audience that blinks on and off cell phones, ruining any chance of total immersion.
The old 70mm big screen analog movie experience only lives on in our memories. It isn't
Re: (Score:2)
There are still a few places that do that.
The "Everest" documentary shot on 70mm wasn't all that long ago.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The 70mm was just a 35mm blowup.
Re: (Score:2)
The 35mm film was the resolution of the silver halide crystals. Which is pretty high resolution. But entirely analog, though an abstract mosaic of crystals. It doesn't fit into a world of shitty bitmaps.
It doesn't fit in well with the digital bullshit that people today insist on imposing on all visual reality. The film as shown in the theaters wasn't 'video' nor was it in any sense digital.
Re: (Score:3)
It probably was, either way Star Wars was not shot on 70mm.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know how many years and hours of effort have gone into trying to recreate this by fans simply because Lucas's ego woulden't allow it. But hearing this is amazing news.
I suspect the word "original" is throwing you off, as LucasFilm surely intended.